Dutch Film Special (1): peers choose the smaller film

On 2 October, the Dutch Film Festival will once again award the Golden Calfs. For the first time, there will be no jury in the main categories. All Golden Calfs involving feature film and feature documentary will be awarded, analogous to the Oscar procedure, by voting among members of the Dutch Academy For Film. By professional brothers and sisters, in other words.

Last night, the nominations announced according to this new system.

Those who feared that it would mainly benefit the greatest common denominator can rest easy. Although challenging or controversial choices of the kind a jury can make are now probably a thing of the past, most nominations went to smaller, artistic films. You won't hear yours truly grumbling about that.

Let's just count. Of the total 15 nominations in the three categories of best film, director and screenplay, only three ended up with a title that attracted more than 100,000 viewers.

The Hazes bio Blood, sweat & tears received nominations (among others) for best film and screenplay. Michiel de Ruyter got a region nomination, in addition to a nomination for lead actor Frank Lammers. The other best film nominations, limiting ourselves to that, went to Gluckauf, The surprise, Schneider vs. Bax and Prince.

The list of films with the most nominations in all categories yields a similar picture. Top with 10 nominations the Limburg father and son drama Gluckauf, followed by audience success Blood, sweat & tears (8 nominations) alongside the small, transverse Prince (also eight nominations).

The latter in particular gives me great pleasure. Prince is a quirky test of talent from Sam de Jong. Prince initially struggled to find a distributor in the Netherlands, but has since received rave reviews abroad. Highly deserved is also the nomination for Wende Snijders' lead role in Zurich, a smashing drama by Sacha Polak that unfortunately has no chance of winning best film or best direction. A truly underrated title is the surf migrant drama Atlantic., which has definitely fallen short with only a chance of winning the Golden Calf for camera.

A correction to commercialism, could be a conclusion to these first results of the new rating method. Or perhaps a signal that the audience film needs a quality boost?

What will take the most getting used to is the fact that films competing must have had their premiere before 15 July. Titles, often not the least, that premiere at the Netherlands Film Festival do not enter the battle for the Golden Calf until next year.

Those who want to do their own counting can check it all out on the website of the Dutch Film Festival.